


The Prism Perspective

by pansypxrkinson



Series: New Perspective [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: An excuse to admire Draco Malfoy bc reasons, Boys Kissing, Gift Fic, Greenhouses, Happy Birthday Mary !, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Mild Language, New Perspective Series, Parseltongue, Pining Harry is the best Harry!, Tentative feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-03-31
Packaged: 2019-04-16 09:18:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14161653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pansypxrkinson/pseuds/pansypxrkinson
Summary: You're so uptight all the time and I like that too, because it's just so fake isn't it? It's so fake because I can get you to explode against me; because you're never uptight against me. You fold, Malfoy. You always have.





	The Prism Perspective

**Author's Note:**

  * For [carpemermaid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/carpemermaid/gifts).



> Happy Birthday, Mary !! I wrote you a little something as a BIG thank you for being so welcoming, and encouraging me to join the drarry community! I've met so many wonderfully creative people, and had so many interesting conversations all thanks to you, so this is for you! <3  
> I'm sorry that this ended up turning into a continuation of something I wrote a few years ago, but I hope you enjoy it all the same! I think it may actually have been the first drarry I ever wrote, so it's oddly fitting. I've been struggling with writer's block and this really helped, so I suppose I should be thanking you twice over lol ;D 
> 
> Happy Bday, once again, and thank you!
> 
> (This work is unbeta'd, all errors are my own.)

Draco Malfoy was so bloody pale.

His veins seemed to shine through his albino skin like pressed violets against parchment. It gave him an eerie glow, like a snake when it catches the light and you can see its many iridescent scales. Its innocence, its beauty; right before it turns to strike at you.

Rather alarmingly, he did in fact appear like the flowers currently crushed between the pages of Mione's divination books. He had the same wilted, broken look about him. As if he might disintegrate into fragments of petal and pollen at any moment. His shoulders were hunched like Harry had never seen before, and the tips of his fancy black Oxford's were pressed into the small of an alcove, the many leafy plants surrounding him so invasive they almost touched the tip of his pointed nose.

Harry was watching him from underneath his invisibility cloak with little success. Malfoy was hiding out in one of the Herbology rooms, and Harry was finding it harder and harder to see through the clouds of likely noxious gases, and the sweltering steam within Greenhouse Three.

For a second, he looked almost pitiful. No, not pitiful, but human, Harry corrects. There's sweat pearling down his long neck, and his hair is slicked to his forehead in dark blond strands. Harry doesn't think he's ever seen him with his guard so obviously down before. Harry feels a glimmer of guilt in his chest at intruding upon a very private moment, but he ignores it. He's never been very rational when it comes to Malfoy.

Harry himself is sweating in his heavy wollen sweatshirt, and perhaps he should leave lest he faint, but he cannot bring himself to do it. Cannot bring himself to not poke the fire that burns him. Not since that night...

The night that Harry couldn't explain. When he and Malfoy had, well... Harry didn't exactly know what they'd had but he'd known they'd had it. There was something unspoken flickering within the grey depths of Malfoy's eyes. When he'd been studying and Malfoy had run from him. When he'd sunk his teeth flush into his sugar quill. God, the crack had been so satisfying, and for a moment he'd wished it had been Malfoy's pale neck that he'd bitten at. He wished he had stained it cherry red.

Harry had watched as Draco had bolted; stumbling pathetically from his not-so-secret spot in the library.

As if the thought scared him as much as it had scared Harry.

He had brought him to his knees that evening. Had done so with just his mouth and a quill. At this, Harry colours slightly, not willing to entertain the innuendo that floats to the forefront of his mind, but then again he supposes that's not too far off from what occured.  
Something unexplainable. A look. Something that felt like tiny faires were clawing painfully at his insides. It wasn't the chest monster that he'd had in Sixth year. It was more like a fluttering. Tiny wings beating in his throat, making it hard to breathe. Flying at lightning speed like the snitch, but this time it was chasing Harry.

Surprisingly, there was much less possessiveness involved. He didn't feel angry and unfulfilled.

He felt alive.

Perhaps if Harry had been someone else he would have balked at how girly he sounded, but Harry didn't much care. It is what it is. 

Malfoy was moving now. Practising.  
Muttering,

_'Protego!'_

Even a first year could have seen it was a weak spell. The shield flickered so rapidly it looked rather like muggle strobe lighting.

Malfoy's pale hand shook where it clutched his wand.

He gave a sigh and seemed to sink back in on himself.

 

* * *

 

  
Harry stayed like that, watching him until he fell asleep where he was sat, his wand hand dangling limply at his side. It was getting cooler now, and the late afternoon sun cast the greenhouse in glimpses of orange light against the glass walls. The streaks of colour lashed across Malfoy's face in ribbons.  
He looked marvellous, Harry noted, with a slash of pain and longing that left as quickly as it arrived. It surprised Harry with its strength.

The mandrakes were now beginning to awaken, sighing softly and twitching their roots, but Malfoy barely stirred.

He knew that he was being strange again, watching Malfoy just as he had in Sixth Year. Just as he had his whole life. Fascinated with the arrogant prat. He'd afforded him the title of arch nemesis when he were eleven, knowing full well he'd faced troubles much more traumatic than a mere school rival, and so had many more suitable candidates. Such as actual Voldemort, Harry thought wryly.

But Draco Malfoy had always seemed to get under his skin. He didn't want to fight Voldemort, but he loved fighting Draco. Perhaps he'd been able to tell that deep down they were similar. They had possessed such complementative personalities that had assured them either as the closest of friends, or the most bitter of enemies.

Perhaps.

Harry still wanted to punch his sleeping face, though. Maybe even as much as he wanted to kiss it.

He shifts uncomfortably, partly from his thoughts, and partly because his bum is beginning to go numb from where he's sitting on the floor. He knows he should leave. Ron and Hermione will be wondering where he's got to... And yet the stone slabs are comfortingly warm under his fingers, and the steady drip of dragon's blood from the fanged geranium is hyponotic.

Harry's eyes fall upon Draco's form again, as they always do, and he notices something. One of the plants next to him is moving. Snake root, Harry recognises. There's a small snake curled around the base of the plant. Harry hisses a ' _hello,'_  giving a small wave when it turns its beady eyes upon him.

Whilst many parts of Voldermort that resided within him Harry'd rather forget, he was secretly thrilled to discover he'd retained most of his parselmouth abilities. Despite their connotations, Harry had always related to snakes. Harry himself had been misjudged through prejudiced attitudes many a time, and so he was prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt, even if he still saw Nagini in his nightmares.

She's a lovely cream colour, kind of like Malfoy's hair, with small black eyes like poppy seeds. She blinks at him, and slithers over in his general direction.

He thinks he must be a weird sight; hiding beneath his invisibility cloak upon the floor of Greenhouse Three, watching a sleeping Draco Malfoy and talking to a snake, but then again, he supposes weirder things have happened.

The snake, Antheia, Harry learns, has taken to poking her tongue out at his invisibility cloak, and Harry knows that she cannot see him, but can hear his voice. He reaches his hand out and she curls around his wrist, and then, changing her mind, disappears again. 

When she slides him a fresh lily from underneath the vines by Malfoy's head, Harry can tell she's a keeper.

Malfoy stirs at the movement, and blinks open his grey eyes. Harry notes that nowadays they are a lot warmer than they used to be. Harry used to see thunderstorms in his eyes. Used relish it when they'd fought together. And yet, Harry thinks he prefers this. He doesn't look so cruel anymore. Now, Harry thinks he can see the brightness of a sky that has just rained, and left glimmering breaks of gold in its wake. Like an emerging sun.

He still looks piteous though. More miserable than Harry has ever seen him. Harry supposes that he would feel the same if he were failing Defence too. He wants to help; to throw off the cloak and offer to tutor him. Not just because right now Draco Malfoy is the most beautiful sight Harry has ever seen in his life, but because he truly wants to help. Would do the same even if he saw Parkinson in this same spot. Dejected and unfairly punished for events out of her control.

But Harry doesn't. He knows Malfoy would never be comfortable with such an admission of weakness. Not to mention the fact that Harry followed him here. He wonders if it is all in his head.

He, Harry Potter, could never be with Draco Malfoy. He is too scared to even help him. He'd never been afraid of Malfoy before. Hated him, of course. Been angry at him, constantly. But he'd never feared him. The fact that he did now, scared him even more.

Perhaps Malfoy was messing with his head. Would jump to humiliate him the moment he took the bait. Maybe he would laugh at him for even deigning to imagine... Harry didn't think it was true. But the though was so terrible that it deterred him from removing his cloak.

That is, until Antheia uncoils herself from Harry's wrist, and glides out from underneath the cloak, curling around a pooled corner, and wrenching it from over Harry's head.

Fuck.

He goes to hiss indignantly at Antheia, who seems amused, but then he realises he looks unhinged enough already. He closes his eyes, and when they open Malfoy's stunned grey eyes are still focused on him, despite his best efforts to apparate within school grounds. He can feel his hair standing on end from the static, and his cheeks burn so fiercely in the sweltering heat of the greenhouse that he fears they'll melt his flesh away.

"Erm.. Hi Malfoy," He scratches an arm nervously.

"Potter?! What? What in Merlin's name are you doing here," Malfoy's eyes are almost comically wide, he seems too shocked to remember how pissed off he was. Harry fights down the part of him that finds it endearing.

"Um, I was,"

"-Yeah?"

Harry considers making up some excuse. He doubts it'll be believable but anything is better than the truth, surely. Until something in Malfoy's expression stops him. Something so reminiscent of how he'd looked when their eyes had met before in the library, heady and intoxicating. He looks on almost challengingly, like's he's daring him to lie.

Like most things involving Malfoy, it rubs him up the wrong way, and he plays into it before he can stop himself.

"I followed you here, Malfoy." He lifts his chin, guardingly.

And there it is, the colour at his cheeks. It gives him away. A muscle twitches in his jaw. Defensive. Harry knows how much Malfoy despises appearing weak. Nonetheless, he continues,

"Why?"

"Because I wanted to. I have as much right to be here as you do, Malfoy."

He cocks the proverbial gun, and steadies himself,

Shoots.

"-You're not special,"

Malfoy twitches at that. He knows they're going into dangerous territory.

To anyone else it would seem a normal conversation. The way they're still sitting calmly. They way that Harry head leans back against the glass, and Malfoy's wand twirls nonchalantly between his fingertips.

Harry knows them though. He can feel them skating close to the edge of something. Maybe they're going to fight again. Maybe something's going to break. He can feel the weight of the events of the previous month. He remembers his teeth as they cut through his sugar quill, and he wants to feel the bite of Malfoy's lips against his instead. He can feel the inevitable.

He knows he's going to tell him so.

"Why were you stalking me, Potter." He shoots Harry a wilting stare that Harry wants to punch off of his face. "Aren't you getting bored of me yet?"

Harry knows this is it. This is the edge of all they've been dancing around, the edge of their personal taboo. This game of one up that they're playing. To back down is to lose. He doesn't wanted to lose, but surely, he couldn't... There's no way-

Harry does.

"I could ask you the same question, but it doesn't matter does it? The answer's the same," Harry's voice shakes.

"What answer," Malfoy manages between clenched teeth. 

Harry's certainly not looking up anymore, somehow his exposed neck is too much vulnerability. No, his eyes are fixed on Malfoy, and surely it's the heat that's making him burn like this. Surely, it's not Malfoy. He sees the lie for what it is. 

Antheia's hissing beside him, her tongue outstretched like she can taste the salt in the air, the violence. She retreats back to the snake root.

Harry however, moves closer to Malfoy. The steely gaze he's met with is finality.

Fuck the taboo.

"I like looking at you. I like the way you whisper your spells, like you think they'll work better if you do. I like your stupid hair and the way it looks all fanned out against the walls when we fight. I like your eyes. You're so uptight all the time and I like that too, because it's just so fake isn't it? It's so fake because I can get you to explode against me; because you're never uptight against me. You fold, Malfoy. You always have,"

Malfoy stares back at him, vaguely, like he's completely lost in Harry, and that just makes it worse, because he can't stop; because finally admitting it feels like oxygen after suffocation.  
He continues, crouched down and moving closer still, spilling words like ink, whispering them now, low in his throat in between the lump that resides there.

"You have no idea. No idea the amount of times I taste that same damn berry flavour when I look at you now. After that night. I had to vanish them you know, because everytime I sucked on one, I'd have to leg it to the dorms before I'd come apart right there in the middle of Charms. You've destroyed me, and I still bloody hate you, Merlin, I hate you more than I ever did before for this. It's unforgivable."

Malfoy's breath is coming fast now. So much so, that it's audible.

Still he says nothing. He seems to have lost the ability to speak. His eyes trail down, fixed on Harry's bottom lip and Harry can't resist the temptation to bite into it and taste the phantom cherry. The crystaline shell that slides against his teeth.

The words have clogged up now, and Harry has nothing more to say, because his mind is fillied with the urge to just do.

Malfoy's eyes fall closed now. Harry's so close that he can feel Malfoy's breath against him. There is a patch of redness from the sun that stands out just underneath Malfoy's collarbone, his shirt undone from the heat, and Harry's grateful for that because he doesn't think he'd have had the boldness to undo it himself.

"Please," Malfoy mouths silently, but Harry can read it.

Harry, unable to say anymore, fits his mouth against it, in some brilliant parody of the events of the previous month.

Malfoy's gasps and his fingers thread their way through Harry's hair twisting and pulling and utterly desperate. He moves flush against Malfoy and Harry's lips stretch into a smile as he hears him whisper,

" _Fuck,_ "

Harry swings a leg over Malfoy's own, and settles down in his lap, caught between disbelief that they're doing this, and euphoria as Malfoy breathes,

"Merlin, I want to taste you,"

Harry lets him.

The feeling of Malfoy's bottom lip against his own mouth is glorious, and punctuates the otherwise silence in the greenhouse.

Malfoy's knee is rocking against Harry wonderfully, and he seems to have broken his own vow to silence because he's muttering to himself but it's too unintelligible and so he fits his mouth against Malfoy's again, and truly hears him now.

_"Want you, want you,"_

Like it's a manta. Like Harry's land and he's drowning.

_"Fuck it all, Potter. I want you,"_

"Yeah," Harry mutters back, because he's lost the ability for eloquency.

He goes to remove more clothing, and really it feels glorious in the boiling room. The sun has almost completely set now, and they're framed in a deep red glow that somehow makes everything more beautiful. It underscores the ache in his stomach, the commodity of the thing. Harry feels the conflict of Malfoy's mouth over his and it feels like a bruise he can't help but prod at, like an itch he shouldn't scratch, for everytime he does, it comes back worse. Euphoric and tangible, and despite the heat, Malfoy hands are shot through with cold when they rest against his chest. It's brilliant. It's never-ending. 

Until he realises they're in a greenhouse, and anyone could walk in. Or glance inside.

Harry, with great deliberation, pulls back.

"We...we should, we should do this somewhere else, shouldn't we?"

"W-what? Oh. Yeah... Probably." Malfoy looks almost surprised that they're vocalising it. The words are tougher to swallow than the action. 

Harry sighs, "Shit."

He leans back against the counter now and stares up at the fading sun. Now, the passion has lessened somewhat, Harry can feel awkwardness fighting through. 

He sees Antheia slide back over to him, curling around his wrist. Evidently, she realises Harry can't really be angry with her at this point. Harry's not sure whether he should be. He's not sure if he is.

Malfoy eyes the small snake warily.

Maybe their desire to constantly one up one another hasn't quite died yet, because Harry whispers a "back again?" in parseltongue, purely for the hedonistic pleasure of being a show off.

"Parseltongue. I didn't know you could still speak it," he mutters, and places a self-conscious hand against the mark at his collarbone, blooming purple like a hydrangea.

Harry looks away whilst he still can. "Yeah, I was surprised, too." He says indifferently. He's not that much of a show off.

Nonetheless, Malfoy's eyes darken, and for a second he wonders if he's angry, until he says,

"You're really fucking hot, Potter. I hate it."

Harry winks for show, because humour is the only way to handle the situation at this point. He feels a little lost. 

Malfoy laughs.

"Nice,"

He casts a tempus, "You know, maybe we should get to dinner," 

"That's true, but maybe we can spare a few more minutes. I like the company," he finishes lamely.

Draco's smile is tentative and hopeful, and as lost as Harry's. It's nothing like the frown that had resided there earlier, though. It's so much better than that.

"Okay," he says, and gazes up at the blue sky that surrounds them now, a cloak of coldness; he tastes reality. 

 

* * *

 

Malfoy doesn't run. They stay there for a while. They chat idly.

Harry does, in fact, like the company. He forgets all about the taboo. He also misses dinner.


End file.
